AND HE HEALED THEM ALL
A Day in the Life of the Teacher from Nazareth
A Novel
Jeffrey McClain Jones
And He Healed Them All
Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey McClain Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
2nd Edition
John 14:12 Publications
www.john1412.com
Cover
by
Gabriel W. Jones
Photographic images courtesy of Getty Images.
To John Lehman, Sr. and Joanna, and the people of Reba Place Church from 1986 to 1999.
Chapter One
Only a Dream
I straightened my shirt collar for the fourth time, tried to slow my breathing, and wished I had somewhere to leave my coat. This is no time of year to make a good impression, I thought, looking down at my salt-and-snow-blotched shoes. I looked at the solid oak door in front of me, as if it could offer me some assurance that the occupant within that office would be glad to see me. But, then, I didn’t even know if she was in there.
Previous conversations with Dr. Jillian Moore began to rerun in my mind’s projector again. I fast-forwarded from one scenario to the next, imagining my smooth and sophisticated responses. It occurred to me that my persona in these little trailers to the movie that I wanted to be my life bore an embarrassing similarity to James Bond. I shook my head at that revelation. My internal disgrace killed my courage. I wasn’t ready for this kind of emotional stretch. I stepped back from the door.
It opened.
The timing was such that it almost appeared that the door triggered on my step away from it, like an automatic door with a confused motion sensor. But I was the one looking confused now.
“James, is it?” A tall brunette in a gray wool skirt and dark gray cardigan greeted me.
I stared into her deep blue eyes, trying to remember the answer to her question.
“Ah, yeah. James. Walter’s . . . friend.” I hesitated over that last word, but it suited the situation better than the truth, which was much more complicated.
“Yes, of course. I remember who you are. It’s just your name I wanted help with.” She probably sensed my nerves.
Her comment about remembering me almost switched me over to my second agenda item, but I had this planned and stuck to my prepared comments, like a politician trying to defend his campaign.
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about Walter, if you have a minute.” I glanced inside her office to see that she wasn’t with someone already.
“I have a couple of minutes before my next appointment, come on in,” she said.
As I walked into her colorfully and neatly decorated office, something occurred to me. “Were you headed somewhere? You opened the door before I knocked.”
She smiled warmly. “No, I just thought I heard someone at the door. Sometimes a resident will come to my door and forget what they wanted. I’ve found a few people standing just where you were, talking to themselves.”
Not having the excuse of senility, all I could do was smile at the coincidence and hope she couldn’t read my mind as well as hear through doors. Swinging back to the reasons for my visit, I stepped over to a tan cloth-covered chair in front of her desk. She relaxed into her tall desk chair and waited for me to begin.
“I wanted to ask you about psychiatric medication for Walter. His doctor had said something about anti-depressants. What do you think? He seems so deflated these days.”
Her pursed lips and narrowed eyes spoke sympathy for Walter and for my concern. “Yes, I’m aware of his mental state, especially after the doctor told him there was no hope of recovering from the stroke. It’s completely understandable.”
I could tell she was an ally in my cause. “Isn’t there some measure of recovery he could be working toward? Wouldn’t that help his mood?”
She nodded. “Actual recovery would be ideal, but even a hope of some improvement would help a lot. It’s just his age that his doctor has in mind. At eighty-seven Walter is pretty weak and frail. I think that influenced his doctor’s decision.”
I knew he wasn’t in great physical shape before the stroke, being a bookish person during his later years. Since his wife’s death, he had given up hiking and canoeing, for which they had been known around campus when he was a professor.
“How do you know Walter?” she said.
“He was my favorite professor from college. In his Sociology of Religion class I first started questioning my conservative upbringing. He became my unofficial mentor and a good friend back then.”
Jillian glanced at the clock, shortening my answer. “I’m sorry, but I do have to go and see someone about a fight.” She laughed.
“Really?” I said, as I stood with her.
She grinned broadly and nodded, but then turned more serious. “I will give some thought to either pushing for physical therapy or maybe prescribing anti-depressants.” She picked up a file from her desk. “I would prefer the former, of course, but insurance may favor the latter.”
I surrendered a sigh at the mention of insurance and followed her out of the office. “I understand, and I appreciate your help. I guess I knew you’d have similar concerns.”
“Of course,” she said.
Then my blood pressure jumped as I calculated whether this would be an appropriate time for me to introduce my second reason for visiting her office. It seemed a stretch. We walked toward the front entrance.
“You said you had to deal with a fight?”
She gave me a quick glance. “Yes, they may be less energetic than they used to be, but we have an altercation to deal with every once in a while.”
We stopped by the oversized wooden front doors, each glancing at the weather through the tall windows on either side.
“Thanks again for your help, Dr. Moore,” I said, offering my hand.
“Please, call me Jillian. Otherwise, I’ll have to call you Doctor . . .”
“Wolfer,” I said and smiled.
“Dr. Wolfer.”
This little exchange was just awkward enough for me to feel room to make that stretch. I grinned. “Well, if you promise not to call me Dr. Wolfer, maybe we could get together some time outside of this place.” I scrapped my prepared speech in favor of attempted spontaneity.
She smiled, no hesitation, no awkward tightening around her mouth, just a smile. That encouragement launched a thousand hopes and left me a bit delirious.
“Sure, that would be nice,” she said. “When did you have in mind?”
As soon as I was able to focus, we compared schedules briefly and settled on Friday, the next night, after work. I’d pick her up at her office. That would bring me back to see Walter again, a valuable side benefit, given my concern about his mental health.
***
That Friday night, ice-crusted snow crunched under my tires as I pulled into the parking lot of the Presbyterian retirement home for the second time that week. My new four-wheel drive car, unfazed by the elements, offered a fleeting sense of security on the dicey roads. I savored that comfort, even something as superficial as the tactile tug and unmistakable new-car smell.
If only I had some sense of security about Walter. Losing his hold on life, his weakened old hands were no longer able to grip firmly the world around him, though his mind remained sharp. Perhaps the pain of watching him struggle with a failing body, and knowing he could see it too, heightened my apprehension. He hid most of his feelings, but when
he met his limits in opening a pill bottle, or needing something from the other side of the room, his eyes grew fierce and his lips pinched. I sometimes wondered if those wheelchair-bound elders who stared blankly into space weren’t to be envied in their oblivion.
As I watched the demise of the one man who meant the most to me in the world, impending loss intruded upon the last days I would spend with him.
I swung through the door of the gray brick building, with its new blue carpet catching the late sunlight through wide lobby windows. The odor of disinfectant mingled with the new-carpet smell fused into a sense of foreboding for me. I walked past the empty reception desk toward the wing where Walter lived. There I knew I would find the nurses’ station occupied. I smiled and said, “Hi,” when the managing nurse straightened in her chair and flashed me a smile. “Good evening, Dr. Wolfer.”
I kept walking, not slowing down to talk. My funk about Walter drove me to his room, where I hoped for some sign of life.
I never called him Walter when I was a student, of course. He was near retirement age then, and I, a straight-laced Midwestern kid with a strict Republican upbringing, spoke to him and of him with respect. But now I too was a professor at that same private Protestant college, and he insisted that I call him by his first name, as if my habit of addressing him more formally threatened to age him even faster than the calendar and gravity.
I stopped before his door, which hung open several inches. I peered in. He seemed to be asleep. A round, middle-aged nurse named Millie quietly removed a tray from next to his bed. Her big doll-like eyes glanced at me as she headed for the door.
Millie squeezed past me, leaned close, and whispered, “He’s actually just waking up. He started opening his eyes when I got to him. But he pretended to still be asleep when he realized that it wasn’t you.”
I smiled and breathed a small laugh. ”Maybe I should let him know that he can’t fool you.”
“Oh, he knows,” she said.
I entered the room and rounded the bed to the window side. Walter’s face was turned that way. Untidy gray loops of hair adorned his pale, bald pate. Once a robust man of a hundred eighty pounds and ruddy faced, he now seemed a faded, wrinkled copy of that hearty old friend.
Indeed he did open his eyes and smile when I stood by his bed. The significance of the smile, however, went beyond simply being glad to see me. He appeared more content in that small gesture than I had seen him in a long time.
“She’s gone; you can ‘wake up’ now,” I said, glancing at the exit through which Millie had disappeared.
He chuckled and slowly raised his left hand to wipe at his eyes. His stroke had rendered his right hand generally useless.
“After they poke and probe you enough times, you start to look for a place to hide when they come in. Sleep is my only refuge.”
“Or faking sleep, if necessary.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Yes.” He nodded, waking up for real now. ”But, you know, I had a dream last night that I didn’t want to wake up from. It was so real, so vividly clear. I was really disappointed to find myself back here.” He reached for his silver-rimmed glasses on the nightstand to his left.
The way Walter carefully maneuvered his glasses with one hand, reminded me of my father. I had lately been thinking about when I’d lost my father; about the cold, gray March day not long after his seventieth birthday, when I stood with my mother and sisters by the graveside. I was wrestling with the realization that I feared Walter’s death more than I had my father’s.
Even as I returned to this gloomy self-absorption, Walter—who was still very much alive—kept talking about his dream. But the bit that I heard hatched a new fear. Was he beginning to lose his mind?
“At first I thought I was just sort of flying over the hills and plains of eastern Iowa where I grew up, but then I saw rockier hills, more like giant piles of stones than mountains, and I knew I was somewhere else.”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting. “You’re just talking about a dream you had last night?”
Walter rolled his eyes toward me and tipped his head. “Yes, a dream. But a dream like no other dream I’ve ever had.” He peered at me over his glasses, his brow lowered in a barely patient pose.
He resumed his account. “Over those rocky hills swarmed people dressed in flowing robes of many colors and textures. It seemed like a part of Morocco or maybe Egypt. But they were all dressed in these ancient costumes; no T-shirts or baseball caps to break up the picture. It seemed to me then that I was viewing a scene from some day in long past history.” He paused to take a breath. He stared over my shoulder, yet I got the impression that he wasn’t looking through the window but replaying the dream in his head.
“These people all converged on a bundle of rocks at the top of a hill next to a dark blue body of water—a lake, I think. They seemed to be hurrying, like they were trying to be the first in line for something.”
I sparred with how a dream could be so compelling as this one seemed to be for Walter. I pushed back at the thought that he was losing his grip on this world. I had heard of people having vivid dreams just before they died. This unusual subconscious foray from Walter seemed like one more sign that his life was near the end.
“It was like I was zooming over these people, flying over like a hawk. They were gathering from all directions, converging on this one hill, different kinds of people, people in groups, in families, and others traveling by themselves.”
“Have you ever had a dream like this before? I mean, one so strangely vivid and so memorable?”
“Well, it’s not any stranger than dreaming I’m in the bathroom at the president’s house—president of the college, that is—and I can’t get out, only to I realize I don’t want to get out, because I’m not wearing any clothes.” Walter chuckled. “Now that’s a strange and memorable dream.”
I laughed. “Well, at least you can identify the place, and you appear in that dream as yourself. This new dream seems sort of out of the blue. Did you see any movies like this recently, read any books with similar images?”
He looked toward the corner of the room again in a moment of exploration. “No, that’s not it. But it does seem out of the blue, doesn’t it? That’s what made it so different from the usual working through of psychological issues in my subconscious mind.” He paused and nodded. “Oh, I still remember my basic psychology. I know where dreams usually come from. But I’m inclined to think that this is something different.”
Walter could easily convince me of most things.
The last time I fought with him was when he advised me not to marry Debra, my now ex-wife. He thought we were mismatched. “Like an embarrassing pair of socks,” he’d said. “She won’t be there for you when it really counts, and you can’t be supportive of her either, because she has no idea what she wants.” That was a big fight.
I won the battle.
He won the war.
He never did say, “I told you so,” not at any of the hundred points where his analysis proved true.
“Anyway,” he said, “these people are running and walking, and carrying others on stretchers, or pulling them in little wooden carts. They’re swarming toward this one spot. Then it was like I zoomed in to the scene at the top of that hill, where a small group of men stood. None of them seem particularly well dressed, compared with the crowd, but they seemed in command of the situation, as if they knew what was happening. Off to the side, next to the largest rocks on top of that hill, one man knelt, resting his chin in his hands. He didn’t seem upset, just sort of getting away from the people. Maybe he was praying.”
Walter sounded more like a witness recounting a real event than someone trying to catch hold of the mental mirage that describes most dreams.
He continued. “When that man stood up, I realized that the place he was standing was protected on three sides, with a wall of rocks the size of school buses behind him. This group of men in front of him formed a sort of barrier, like bodygua
rds. Just like with some kind of rock star, the people who had rushed to the top of the hill were reaching out their hands to this man. They called out to him, crying for him to help, begging for his attention.
“Then, in spite of this press, what appeared to be a woman with her son were let through the ring into the space where that man stood. The woman was tall and thin, with long dark hair under a light gray head covering, and the boy was about twelve or thirteen, not quite as tall as his mother. The man smiled at them, and the boy ran to hug him. At first, it seemed that they were related, the boy looked at the man with such love and admiration. The mother’s smile too was full of adoration and familiarity.”
Walter stopped and took my measure.
I had been shaking my head, lost in the picture of his dream. “What?”
“James, you’d better sit down.”
I breathed a snicker at the irony. He was right; I’d been standing in the same position the whole time, one hand on my chin and my brow furrowed. I pulled up the nearest chair and settled into it.
What he described sounded like a scene from the Gospels. If I was right, the man in the center was Jesus of Nazareth, as described in the Scriptures, which I’d learned about in Sunday school as a boy. It shocked me to hear Walter describe the scene in his dream just as I had heard it in one of my most memorable Sunday school lessons.
Though I had attended church throughout my childhood, our lessons tended to avoid stories about Jesus’s time on earth. But on this particular Sunday, my fifth grade class had a substitute teacher. A college girl, Sandy Schaefer, had agreed to fill in at the last minute. She said she didn’t have time to prepare the lesson slated for that day, so she instead told us a story from the Gospels that she particularly liked.
This lesson stood out for me above all others from my Sunday school days. I suppose part of it was that a pretty, young woman, fresh and full of life, told the story. I had often thought of that story Sandy told us, reliving the soft buzz I felt sitting close to her in that small classroom. As she vividly told the Gospel story, I could see everything she described. The story she told and what she said about Jesus stood out in contrast to the endless tales of kings, prophets, and wars that were our usual syllabus.
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